ASH
~*~*~*~
I was seriously starting to re-think my decision to run off and live in the woods.
I loved the nature, of course, and finding enough food wasn’t a problem. When I ran off to live like a free spirit in the forest, however, I wasn’t thinking of the fact that it was approaching winter, and that meant the days were chilly and the nights were absolutely freezing.
I think I’m supposed to be a Floridian nymph, because I fancy the cold about as much as chickens fancy the chopping block.
Even with my low tolerance for anything less than balmy, I was getting along just fine, making a little campfire, sleeping under an assorted collection of leaves, dirt, and pine needles, and spending hours of my time huddled in a little ball, conserving my body heat. Until it began to rain, that is.
As I sat in the icy, pouring rain, I knew I needed to find civilization, with roofs, heaters, and loos. You never realize how much you appreciate a bog roll until you go several weeks without it. So, I started my long, dark, cold, and very, very wet journey, seeking civilization.
I guess my nymph-abilities don’t come with a built-in GPS, because I wandered through those woods for hours, looking desperately for a way back into society. By the time I finally found a road, I was nursing a beaver bite and I couldn’t feel my arms or legs. I was exhausted, and my breaths were coming out in little white puffs of air.
I trudged down that road for what could only have been an eternity, when I finally reached what appeared to be the tiniest strip mall ever, located in the middle of nowhere. I saw flashing lights and cheerful colors, and I was drawn towards it, much like small insects are drawn towards light bulbs.
As I drew nearer, I noticed that nearly all of the stores had “closed” signs in the windows, which looked battered and boarded up. There was music coming from what appeared to be a bar at the far end of the strip, but bars make me uncomfortable. There are too many smashed men who have a lot more bottle than they should. People tried to chat me up the last few times I went into one, and let me tell you, drunken men never listen when you tell them to clear off.
I decided to look around to see if any other stores were open. All I found was a closed Chinese restaurant, an abandoned clothing store, and a bright pink Victoria’s secret that smelled overpoweringly like roses and musty, romantic charm and was filled with frilly, lacy underthings.
The bar smelled like smoke, beer, and urine. Colorful Christmas lights blinked sporadically where they were hung along the walls, and an inflatable Santa was propped in a corner. Grizzly men in stained undershirts and dirty baseball hats yelled at the tv, and nobody noticed my entrance. I collapsed onto a bar stool and ordered a beer. Apparently in America you have to be 21 to drink; I found myself very thankful for the fake ID Akira had given me. I even looked less feminine than usual in the photo.
It had been a while since I had been on a bender, and I had forgotten how bitter the stuff tasted. After sputtering a bit on the first few sips, though, I was able to take what I hoped were manly swigs from the bottle without coughing on the heady liquid.
“You come here often?” a masculine voice asked, and I choked on my beer as a man slid into the seat next to mine. I glanced over at him out of the corner of my eye as I regained my composure. He looked tall, but it was hard to judge, as he was sitting down. His hair was a deep red and slightly mussed, as if he had casually run a hand through it, but it looked too perfect to have been accidental. He had a five o-clock shadow that accentuated his sculpted jaw. He was wearing a dark suit with an impeccably tied bow-tie. I yelped when I saw the handle of a gun tucked into his trousers.
“Is that a gun in your pocket?” I asked, nervous sweat breaking out on my forehead as I scanned the room for possible escapes.
“No, no, I’m just happy to see you,” the man replied suavely, tucking what was most certainly a gun farther back and covering it with his jacket’s coattail. Honestly, who did this man think he was, James Bond?
Taking note of my discomfort, he offered his hand in introduction. “I’m Thomas Reimann, but you can call me Tommy,” he winked. “And you’re, uh, Ash Carson, right?” he asked, consulting a small piece of paper he had pulled out of his pocket.
I nodded mutely. His name sounded vaguely familiar; was he part of the Mafia? He didn’t look Italian, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to wake up tomorrow morning next to a severed horse head.
I turned to get a better look at him. If I was going to die, I was at least going to know the face of my murderer.
My jaw almost dropped. The man was gorgeous! He had smiling green eyes, a handsomely sculpted nose, and a perfectly formed mouth that turned up into a small smirk as he noticed my unmistakable fascination with him, which irritated the bloody hell out of me, but somehow made him even more attractive.
I tore my eyes away, my heart pounding in my chest. He was an attractive man, and attractive men are always dangerous. There was probably a very good reason he was sitting in a bar on Christmas day, and not next to a cozy fire in a nicely decorated room filled with tinsel and evergreen.
I stole one more wary look at him: his broad shoulders, his red hair, and the slight bump the gun made in his jacket. That’s when it started to click; a vaguely familiar name, red hair, and guns?
“Wait, I’m sorry, what did you say your name was again?” I asked, my brain whirring. He couldn't possibly be who I was thinking...
"Tommy Reimann," he answered, waving down the bartender for a shot of something clear and lethal-looking. He winked at the bartender and downed his shot before motioning for another.
"Tommy Reimann," I repeated. "Any relation at all to, uh," I paused and swallowed, then tried again. "Any relation to Ela Reimann?"
He spewed his shot all over the salted peanuts, and turned and looked at me, deathly pale.
"Geez, I wasn’t expecting this."
I must have looked confused, because he started to explain, "I got a call a few nights ago from a private investigator, Hank Ramsley. He told me he had information on my sister, and that someone named Ash Carson could lead me to her. He then sent me the coordinates to this town, and told me to be on the lookout for a bedraggled young man.”
He took another shot, then continued, “It was a long shot; we’ve hired tons of investigators through the years, but all that had ever turned up were false leads. Still, she’s my baby sister, so I came. And here we are, on Christmas of all nights. This is a better present than I could have dreamed of." He smiled warmly at me. "Tell me about her; how is she doing, is she okay?”
“I don’t know,” I replied shamefacedly. The last time I had seen Ela was the morning we were all gassed, and half the club was taken away, including her. And if this private investigator thought I was going to lead this strange man into the heart of the club, he was going to be sorely disappointed. “Your sister and I parted under…unusual circumstances,” I said, choosing my words carefully.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“The house in which we were living had a bit of a problem with leaking gas lines, and she got sick and was taken away by…medical professionals,” I answer. Hey, it’s not exactly a lie.
“Oh my God!” Tommy exclaimed. “Do you know which hospital she was taken to?”
Here came the tricky part; if I could just word it right…
“She wasn’t taken away by doctors,” I blurted out. “She was kidnapped by crazy scientists.”
While it wasn’t exactly what I had wanted to say, it could still suit my purposes. Maybe he would think I was completely bonkers and go home, thinking this was just another false lead.
His eyes narrowed.
“Believe it or not, that’s pretty much what Ramsley told me. Like I said, I wasn’t expecting to get anything out of this trip. He said not to worry about that—which is nuts, of course, how could anyone not worry when told his sister was kidnapped by a bunch of psycho scientists? He reported that she is now back at the home where you two apparently lived together?” he said, turning his voice up in a question and raising an eyebrow, all while giving me a thorough once-over.
“...Not the way you’re thinking,” I said, uncomfortable with the look he was giving me. Still, could what he said be true? Could Ela and the others be safely back at the mansion, even as we spoke? “Ela and I are friends, and we lived in that mansion with lots of other people like us.”
“What do you mean, ‘like us,’” Tommy asked.
Darn. I hadn’t meant to let that slip. I glanced down at the beer in my hand; it was still half-full. Was I really such a light-weight as to start spilling secrets before I’d even downed an entire beer? I placed it on the counter with a harsh clink.
“We’re in a sort of club,” I confessed. “We’re all, uh, outdoor enthusiasts.
“Sounds like a commune,” he mumbled. “What kind of crazy shhhhh has she gotten herself into?”
I decided to ignore that. After all, it was pretty suspicious. Even knowing the reason for the club didn’t dispel all my doubts about the saneness of it.
“Anyway,” Tommy said, setting his shot glass firmly on the counter and shaking his head as the bartender went to refill it. “You know where my sister is, or at least, where this ‘mansion’ is. How long will it take to get there, and when can we leave?”
Woah, woah, woah. We? What was this man thinking? I was NOT about to get into a car and drive away with some strange man, even if he was Ela’s brother! Why in the bloody hell did he think I trusted him enough to betray the club’s location?
That’s when his green eyes started to pool. I found myself panicking; was this guy about to cry? The only thing that made me more uncomfortable than, well, a man, was a man crying. All the men I had ever known would never show that kind of weakness, especially not in front of a virtual stranger. Was he trying to manipulate me?
He started whimpering, and he put his hands over mine, drawing me nearer to him.
Please, his eyes begged, and “Please,” his voice pleaded.
I wanted to shrink into the floor and die, or anything else, in order to get away from this batty man.
We were drawing stares. My eyes darted around the room, and I could feel the uncomfortable gazes of the other patrons. I tried to imagine what we looked like; a well-groomed, handsomely dressed man holding another, much less well-dressed young man near to him. They probably thought we were a gay couple, and I got the feeling this rough crowd wasn’t the most accepting group.
“Uh, Tommy,” I say worriedly, trying to pull my hands out from under his. A big, bald man looked especially angry at Tommy’s display of emotion, and, most likely, at his closeness to me. The man ground out his cigarette on his leather jacket, pulled tight by the swell of his impressive muscle. A Rudolph t-shirt was just visible under his partially-zipped jacket.
When the man rose to his feet and started towards us, I grabbed Tommy by his immaculately ironed jacket sleeve and pulled him towards the door, hissing, “Fine, I’ll show you!”
Better to risk a ride with a wimpy man than to be beaten half to death by an angry, drunk man who looked like he could be the Hulk, if he only had green skin.
Tommy held the door open for me and I quickly darted out, eager to make my escape from the bar, and in the moment before I was overcome by crisp, clean, country air, I caught a whiff of his expensive cologne.
After stepping out after me, he smoothed the wrinkles I had created in his jacket with my desperate clutch.
“Where’s your car?” I asked, desperate to put distance between myself and the smoke-laden bar.
He gestured towards the parking lot at the far end of the strip, and we set off at a brisk pace, careful not to slip on any patches of ice.
On our way to the parking lot, we passed Victoria's Secret. I blushed; it was difficult not to, walking next to such a handsome (and potentially dangerous) man. The store was embarrassing enough for me when I had walked passed it earlier.
Tommy noticed my blush, and jokingly asked, "Would you like me to buy you something from there?"
I blushed and stammered, "N-no! I'm uh, I'm a man! I like things like, um, football! Yeah, football! Not girly things like, like, br-brassieres."
Tommy just laughed and grabbed my hand. "You don't have to pretend, doll-face."
I froze. My eye twitched. What on earth was he doing holding my hand?
Then I remembered his flirtatious comments in the bar, the meaningful looks he gave me, and when I caught him checking out my butt as he held the door open for me. I had been uncomfortable with the attention at the time, but hadn't thought too much of it; I was treated like that all the time, back when I dressed like a girl.
Had I been thinking more clearly at the time, however, I would have been more consciously aware that I wasn’t dressed like a girl. I was dressed like a boy.
I shot a terror-stricken look at the man holding my hand.
Oh, God, what had I gotten myself into?
…
I had managed to wrestle my hand from Tommy’s vice-like grip by the time we reached the car. He held the door open for me, and I climbed in. He then walked to the other side and got in, pulling a key from his pocket and turning it in the ignition. It was still weird for me to see cars controlled from the left side. America was weird.
I shuffled uncomfortably in the car seat; it was made of a fine, and most likely very expensive, leather, but for some reason, I couldn’t stop fidgeting. Eventually, I would up sitting with my hands clenched tightly in my lap, staring straight out the window at the snow banks that lined either side of the road.
Tommy tried several times to initiate conversation, but I didn’t speak other than to tell him when to turn or what exit to take (Akira had stressed the importance of being able to find our way back to the mansion, were we ever separated). My lack of verbal contributions didn’t seem to deter him, though. He chattered cheerfully throughout the car ride.
We were about 20 minutes from the mansion when soft guitar strains filled the small car.
Tommy grinned apologetically at me. “Sorry, that’s my cell phone,” he said, holding the steering wheel with one hand as he used the other to dig through his pocket and pull out his phone.
“Hello?” he said into the phone, and then paused, waiting for the person on the other end to respond.
The ensuing silence lasted for so long, I looked over at him to try and determine what was being said by his facial expressions.
His face was stony, and any twinkle of good nature was completely gone from his eyes. His jaw was clenched, and his eyebrows set.
I found myself even more terrified of him than before, and I returned my gaze to the front window, hoping to disappear into the plush leather seat.
“I understand,” Tommy said, and I jumped, startled, as the phone clicked closed. He increased his pressure on the accelerator, and we zoomed forward at what can only be described as breakneck speed.
I yelped and clung to the handle on the door and my seatbelt, positive Tommy had succumbed to insanity and was going to run us off the road and into the nearest tree. It had to have been that phone call that set him off.
“Who was on the phone?” I asked through clenched teeth. I promised myself that if I made it out alive, I would track down whoever was on the other line and put him through a world of pain. I had lost track of the number of times I thought I would die that day.
He didn’t answer me, but he did ease up on the accelerator a bit. Even so, we arrived at the mansion in record-breaking time.
The car screeched to a stop, throwing up gravel onto the carefully manicured lawn. I attributed the grass’ unseasonal green hue under the melting snow to Acacia’s plant-abilities.
Tommy slid quickly out of the car and slammed the door, leaving me to quickly scramble after him as he strode up the long drive to the house and burst through the magnificent front doors.
I was breathing heavily as I rushed in after him, as much from nagging worry as from the physical exertion. I hadn’t been here in months; how would they react to my sudden reappearance? How would they react to Tommy’s appearance?
People began gathering in the foyer, checking out the new guest and his companion, me. I saw many familiar faces and some new, although even the familiar faces looked different to me, distorted and marred. What had happened to them in that lab?
I didn’t have long to reflect on this, because Tommy was searching the small crowd desperately, looking for his sister.
Once he had spotted her, he strode towards her and wrapped his arms around her in a giant hug. She stood stiffly, her face stony and unreadable, and he stepped back. His face showed disappointment, but also a sad understanding.
He put his hands on her shoulders, his gaze unwavering, and said firmly, “You need to get out of here.”
He turned and looked at the rest of the club, making eye contact with each member.
“You ALL need to get out of here, and the sooner, the better.”
...
Mostly unrelated title, yay!
Just why is Tommy so desperately trying to relocate the club?
Will Ela ever return her big brother's hugs?
Will the club eat Tommy for tomorrow's breakfast?
Join us next time to find out!
1/25/2013 revision note: I changed a few things here and there to make it Christmas-y and to fit in better with Wyvern's post. Hope y'all enjoy! Let's get this party started! Woo!
